In general, a driving support system for supporting the driving of vehicles uses an on-board camera and a navigation system to obtain traffic information on a street crossing, a stop position, a curve and approach of vehicles ahead, which require control of slowing down of vehicles. On the basis of the thus obtained traffic information on the vicinity of vehicles, guidance for slowing down by sound is given or a braking force is applied practically in a semi-compulsory manner to provide slowing down support, thereby giving driving support to a driver.
In recent years, such a system has been under development that operation of various types of driving components such as an accelerator pedal, a brake pedal and a steering of a vehicle operated by a driver are detected and the thus detected operation are analyzed to make an objective evaluation of the driving skill of the driver. The above described system has been disclosed, for example, in Patent Document 1, which evaluates the driving skill of a driver on the basis of deceleration of a vehicle detected by a vehicle speed sensor mounted on the vehicle.
In the system disclosed in Patent Document 1, a vehicle is, first, detected for deceleration on the basis of a predetermined measurement cycle. Thus, the amount of change in the thus detected deceleration in the measurement cycle is determined and the maximum deceleration in the measurement cycle is identified. A correlation between the amount of change in the deceleration and the maximum deceleration is determined by statistical processing, for example, regression analysis. The thus determined correlation is defined as measurement characteristics that show slowing down characteristics of a driver who drives a vehicle. The thus defined measurement characteristics are used for evaluating the driving skill of the driver on the basis of an extent of variability thereof.
As described above, according to the system of Patent Document 1, evaluation is made for the safety of vehicle operation by the driver on the basis of an extent of variability in correlation between the amount of change in deceleration and the maximum deceleration in a measurement cycle.